The West Bank and East Jerusalem Searchable Map

I’m happy to announce this year’s Open Archaeology Prize winner. This prize is annually awarded by a jury (in name of the Alexandria Archive Institute) to the best open-access, open-licensed, digital contribution to Near Eastern archaeology by an ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) member. The winning project, The West Bank and East Jerusalem Searchable Map, “includes lists of archaeological sites that have been surveyed or excavated since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. Since that time, the oversight of the antiquities of the area has devolved on two government bodies: the military administration’s Staff Officer for Archaeology (SOA) in Judea and Samaria and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The IAA, which is responsible for East Jerusalem, is a civil branch of government and its records are open for inspection. Some of the records of the Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria are being accessed in full for the first time as a result of the joint Israeli-Palestinian Archaeology Working Group. This involved a team of Israeli and a team of Palestinian archaeologists and cultural heritage professionals working in concert to create new data resources that document the single, unitary archaeological landscape of the southern Levant, which is now bisected by the modern borders.” “The data contained in this database is also available in a visually searchable Google Map interface.” It is an initiative of the University of Southern California, Tell Aviv University and the University of California, Los Angeles.